Sense of Deception (24 page)

“Interesting,” I agreed. “But what does it mean?”

“Don't know. Yet. Anyway, from what I can tell, she's never worked. She just keeps marrying these guys and they keep divorcing her, which is no surprise, because, well, we've met her and found her company to be as delightful as they likely did.”

“Word,” I said, holding out my fist. Candice bumped it with hers.

“I have a theory, but I can't prove it,” she said next.

“What's the theory?”

“I think that Chris is giving her money.”

“Didn't she live with him at some point?” I asked.

“She did,” Candice said. “She lived with her ex-son-in-law on and off in between husbands from 'ninety-eight through two thousand three. When Chris lost physical custody of Noah, he sure didn't need her hanging around, so she moved in with the next guy she married and got divorced from in 'oh-six.”

“Did she maybe get some money from any of her divorces?” I asked, trying to piece together the threads.

Candice made a puffing sound. “Not enough to live on. In my check through public records, she was awarded a total of a hundred grand.”

“That's not chump change,” I argued.

“Over the past twenty-five years?” Candice countered.

“Oh,” I said. “I stand corrected.”

“Yeah. So, other than a monthly five-hundred-dollar stipend from Skylar's father's pension, she's earning no income that I can find.”

“So what's she living off of?”

“I think Chris is keeping her afloat.”

“For what reason, though?”

Candice shrugged a shoulder. “He's got big money and she did him a favor.”

“What favor?”

“She sent her daughter to the needle for murdering his son.”

“You think he put her up to her testimony against Skylar?”

Candice tapped the table. “I do. I mean, if you think your ex had killed your kid after taking him away, wouldn't you want a little revenge?”

I thought on that. “Didn't Allen say that Chris had been going off about Skylar at Noah's funeral?”

“He did,” Candice said.

“Okay, so how does knowing any of this help Skylar's appeal?”

“It shows prejudice and perjury,” Candice said. “And it might help to show the appellate court, at the very least, that the death sentence imposed by the presiding judge was a little harsh, given that Skylar's mother was enticed to lie on the witness stand as an act of revenge on the part of Noah's father. It might not be enough to get Skylar a new trial, but if it saves her life, it'll also buy us time.”

I frowned. “That sounds like a long shot.”

“All we've got left are long shots, Sundance.”

“Okay, so what do we do? Go see Chris?”

Candice smiled in that way that said she was way ahead of me. “I already called Oscar. He's heading there after he stops off at his Realtor's to sign his papers.”

“We're not going?”

“If you were Chris Miller, an angry white man who's had his whole world taken down by a woman, who would you rather talk to? Us? Or Oscar?”

“That sounds like a rhetorical question.”

Candice pointed her finger at me and made a clicking sound with her tongue.

At that moment Dutch came out, wearing only a towel around his waist and a glistening sheen from the shower. Candice pretended to avert her eyes while subtly sneaking peeks at my hubby's exquisite physique.

“Morning!” he said, grabbing a cup from the cupboard.

“Uh . . . good morning,” Candice said, dipping her chin.

“Hey, honey,” I said, enjoying his appearance very much.

Dutch poured himself a cup of coffee from the carafe, winked at me, and headed back to the bathroom to finish his morning ablutions.

There was a moment of silence before Candice let out a low whistle. “Abigail Cooper, you are one
lucky
bitch.”

That made me laugh and laugh.

*   *   *

S
everal hours later she and I were at the office. I had been fast-forwarding video from one of the cameras pointed to the tool section for what felt like hours. So far I'd fast-forwarded through June 15 and June 16, and I was well on my way to finishing up with June 17 when the time stamp was approaching ten thirty a.m. and suddenly, two individuals, one tall, one short, waddled forward into view. I sat up and smacked the Pause button, freezing the screen. “Holy shit!” I shouted. (Swearing during moments of crime-solving exuberance shouldn't cost me a quarter.)

The inner office intercom on my phone beeped. “You find something?”

“I've got them!” I called, rewinding the tape a little and hitting Play. Candice clicked off and a moment later I heard her heels in the hallway. “Look,” I said, pivoting my laptop slightly so she could see.

The image on the screen was a bit fuzzy, but even so, it was clear enough to see a man with white hair and a blond boy walking alongside the tools lining the wall, while he pushed a cart a little ahead of him. The man paused at each tool, pointed to it, and said something to the boy. At one point, the boy spoke and the man reacted as if he was having a hearty laugh. He leaned back and held his sides, and then he put his arm on one of the young man's shoulders. At that moment Skylar Miller appeared in the video. She came charging up the aisle like a mama bear, grabbed Noah's arm, tugged him from the man's grasp, and put her son behind her protectively. She then appeared to be yelling at the man,
wagging her finger, until she must've had her say, because she then turned, picked up her son, and hurried away.

I almost stopped the tape at that point, but Candice, who must've read my mind, said, “Let it keep going.” We watched the next few seconds and they revealed the man walking down the aisle in the same direction Skylar had gone and peering around the corner. At that moment another figure came into view. Allen. He tapped the guy on the shoulder, got up close and personal to him, and then pointed toward the exit.

The man walked away with his shoulders hunched and his stride angry.

“Bingo,” Candice said. Reaching for my sticky-note pad and a pen, she wrote down the time stamp on the video and said, “Come with me and bring the laptop.”

I followed behind her and we went back to her office, where she picked up her desk phone and, after checking something on her cell, dialed from the landline. Just a moment later she said, “Hi Gary, it's Candice Fusco from Austin. Listen, that tape you sent us showed us exactly what we were looking for. Thank you so much, but I'm wondering if I could ask you for some additional footage?” There was a pause, then, “Awesome. The footage we need would be from the parking area facing the northwest corner of the lot closest to the exit. And the time stamp would be Thursday, June seventeenth, two thousand four, at approximately ten twenty-eight a.m. Fifteen minutes of footage around that time should be perfect.”

There was another pause; then Candice said, “You're the best, Gary. I really appreciate it.”

Once she hung up, I said, “That throaty voice you use when you ask for information really turns the boys on, doesn't it?”

She chuckled. “Whatever gets me the info, Sundance.”

“Heartbreaker,” I mocked.

“It should take about ten minutes,” she replied, ignoring me.

“I'm assuming we're trying to see if Skylar was followed out of the parking lot?”

“We are,” she said, taking a seat. “And while we wait, let's check in with Oscar.”

I took a seat. I'd been so focused on the footage, I'd forgotten all about him. Candice called him on her cell and had the phone on speaker when he answered. “Fuscoooo!” he said, clearly in a good mood. “I was just about to call you.”

Candice and I traded smirks. Sure he was. “Abby's here,” she told him. “What've you got?”

“Chris Miller wouldn't say much, other than he hopes that Skylar feels the sting of that needle and that she burns in hell.”

“Nice guy,” I sneered. “Is he taken?”

Oscar ignored me. “He totally blames her for Noah's murder. According to him, Noah would've grown up, gone to college, and lived a great life if only his mom hadn't won custody. He also blames the system, which he says was set up to award custody unfairly to the mother. Even if—and these are his words—‘she's a crack-pipe-smoking whore.'”

“Did he mean Skylar?” I asked. “Did she do crack?”

“I think it was more a general statement,” Oscar told me. “He was pretty worked up.”

“Okay, so he's still convinced she did it,” Candice said.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Did you ask him about Faith?” Candice said next. “Is he supporting her?”

“He clammed right up when I brought that up.”

“Interesting,” Candice and I said together.

Oscar laughed. “My guess, he's supporting her, but he's being careful about it because, like you said, Candice, if we found out
there was some sort of an agreement between them, it could be used to help Skylar's appeal.”

I looked at Candice. “You gotta dig and find the money trail,” I told her, feeling a sense of urgency about it.

“Did he say anything else?” I asked, hoping that maybe Oscar had asked him if Chris remembered talking to Noah about the man in Home Depot. I doubted that Chris would tell us if he had, but maybe he'd slip up and say something offhand that would help us.

“Nope. The second I asked him if he was supporting his ex-mother-in-law, he told me to get out of his office and go talk to his attorney.”

“Well, that's telling,” Candice said. And then she filled him in on the videotape.

“Wow,” he said, and then he started to say something else, but he cut off midword and instead said, “That's Bonnie. Can I catch up with you guys later?”

“Sure!” I told him. “And congratulations on the new house!” I knew it was preemptive, but I wanted to be the first to say it. My radar said Bonnie had good news.

Candice's e-mail pinged at that moment and she pulled her laptop forward and clicked to download the footage. Then she clicked on the screen again and swiveled her computer so I could see.

We watched in silence for a few minutes until all of a sudden we saw Skylar appear from the exit and walk over to a nearby station wagon, still holding on to Noah, who appeared to be crying. She spent a few moments soothing him next to the car, and in those moments another figure appeared. “There!” I said, pointing to the lower right-hand corner.

“Yep,” Candice agreed.

We watched the guy who called himself Slip move over to a
beat-up pickup a row away and climb in. He sat there, not moving, the whole time Skylar was consoling Noah, putting him into his booster, and buckling him in. She then got into the driver's side and a moment later had pulled out of the space to turn the car to the right and drive up the aisle. A half beat later, Slip had also backed out of his space, turned his car to the right, and drove up his aisle, where he waited for Skylar to pass him; then he turned right and drove after her.

“It was him,” I said. “It really was!”

Candice didn't say anything. Instead she rewound the tape, and used her fingers on the keypad to enlarge the image. “Holy Lady Luck!” she said when the image had finished pixelating.

“I can see letters!” I yelled, excited by what was on the screen.

“Is that a
P
or an
R
?” she asked me.

I squinted.
“R,”
I said. “
R
,
W
, three . . . or is that a five?”

“Three, I think,” Candice said.

I squinted and pushed my face closer to the screen. “I think that's a six and maybe a one?”

“And the last letter is
F
.”

“Or
E
,” I said.

Candice wrote down several of the letter-and-number combos that the plate might contain, and then she said, “What do you think for make and model of the truck?”

“It's a little small,” I said. “I don't think it's an F-one-fifty.”

“No way is it an F-one-fifty,” she agreed. “Maybe a Chevrolet? They made some smaller-model trucks in the early two thousands.”

“Yeah, but that thing looks pretty beat-up. My guess is that it's from the nineties.”

Candice jotted herself a note. “I'll do some digging. Now how about the color?”

The footage from the parking area surveillance camera had been in black-and-white. The truck appeared to be of a dark color, but whether it was dark blue, dark green, black, or charcoal, I had no idea. “My guess is that it's navy blue,” I said. “I mean, that's a pretty popular color among truck owners.”

Candice nodded and wrote that down. I saw that she added black, gray, and brown to the mix, just for good measure. “How long do you think it'll take us to find this truck?”

Candice sat back and pulled her laptop toward her on the desk. “Don't know. But the sooner you let me get cracking on searching for it, the sooner we'll find it.”

I saluted her and headed back to my own office, where I promptly called Oscar, who was just about at our office. “So, are you a new homeowner?”

He chuckled. “I am, Cooper.”

“Told ya!”

“I close a week after the inspection, assuming the property doesn't have anything big wrong with it.”

“It's fine,” I assured him.

“I need to go furniture shopping!” he said suddenly.

“Tonight,” I promised him. I figured we could do some major damage to his credit cards sometime after five. And, along the way, I was also going to make him swing by a department store so that he could stop looking like a bum on his days off. “First, I need you to come and take a look at the feed we got off the parking lot surveillance video from Home Depot. Slip gets into a truck and looks to be following Skylar and Noah out of the lot. We can see most of the plate, but the make and model of the truck are what's throwing us.”